Keskkonnaeetika võtmetekste

Keskkonnaeetika võtmetekste

Keskkonnaeetika võtmetekste. Koostanud ja toimetanud AIre Vaher, Riste Keskpaik, Külli Keerus. Tartu, 2008. 93 lk

Selle esseekogumiku on avaldanud Tartu Ülikooli eetikakeskus ja Jakob von Uexkülli keskus. Esmakordselt lugesin seda lühiteost aasta aega tagasi ja siis polnud mul suuremat aimu ei Tartu Ülikoolist, Uexküllist ega ka sissejuhatuses tänatud professorist Kalevi Kullist. Nüüd tundus nii mõnigi asi palju tuttavam. Näiteks loomade väärkohtlemise religioosseid tagamaid selgitav essee "Meie ökoloogilise kriisi ajaloolised juured" lõpeb sellega, et Assisi Franciscust tahetakse kuulutada ökoloogia pühakuks. Paljugi nende esseede puhul on kaheldava väärtusega (nt ökoloogiline kriis, vajadus pühakute järele), aga vähemasti üldpilt on mõtlemapanev. Peter Singeri essee on neist neljast minu jaoks mõjusaim, kuna toob kasutusse sellise sõna nagu spetsiesism (speciesism?) ja kõneleb loomade väärtkohtlemisest võrdluses rassismi ja seksismiga. Tulemus on muidugi see, et kõik inimesed on vähemal või rohkemal määral spetsiesistid (mis ei lisa arguemendile suuremat kaalu, aga loob kindla perspektiivi).
Teose eesmärk on osutada tähelepanu sellele, kas on õige pidada inimest maailma valitsejaks - võimuks, mis represseerib häbenematult iseenda elukeskkonda ja kõiki selles sisalduvaid olendeid. Miks on inimlapse elu püha, aga vasika oma mitte?
Mul on hea meel, et A-raamatukogul see raamat on. Erinevalt Freudist või Hiina surmanuhtlusest rääkivatest raamatutest, soovitaksin ma seda raamatut teistel lugeda.

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Real understanding of any scientific subject must include some knowledge of its historical growth; we cannot comprehend and accept modern concepts and theories without knowing something of their origins - of how we have got where we are. Neglect of this maxim can lead to that unfortunate state of mind which regard the science of the day as finality. (Cherry 1977: 32)

We should temper reading by writing, and reciprocally, so that the written composition gives body (corpus) to what has been obtained by reading. Reading collects orationes logoi (discourses, elements of discourse); we must make a corpus of them. (Foucault 2005: 359)

The existence of the inner book, along with unreading or forgetting, is what makes the way we discuss books so discontinuous and heterogeneous. What we take to be the books we have read is in fact an anomalous accumulation of fragments of texts, reworked by our imagination and unrelated to the books of others, even if these books are materially identical to ones we have held in our hands. (Bayard 2007: 85-86)

The post-Cubist function of quotations in collages emerges with particular clarity in the early notes of Eisenstein, who wrote in 1928 that "an entire treatise can be made by composition of quotations." In his later works, in which compositions of quotations are often used, he himself explains them (in the spirit of the "linear style" of quotations) by a desire for "minimal distortion." (Ivanov 1976b: 323)

A person may be interested in scientific statements for their own sake (interested in collecting them as a person may be interested in collecting butterflies); a person may have knowledge and the increase of knowledge as his goal. (Morris 1949: 128)

In non-literate society, of course, there are usually some individuals whose interests lead them to collect, analyse and interpret the cultural tradition in a personal way [but] it is still evident that the literate individual has in practice so large a field of personal selection from the total cultural repertoire that the odds are strongly against his experiencing the cultural tradition as any sort of patterned whole. (Goody & Watt 1963: 335)

A different language is too often taken for stammering, a nonconformist virtuosity is misinterpreted as formlessness, exquisite variability is confused with cruelty, intentional enigmatic indefiniteness is deplored as the disappointing obscurity or fragmentariness of a mere neglected sketch, and in the stupendous interplay of symmetry and disequilibrium onesided critics are prone to overlook the harmony and to observe nothing but chaos. (Jakobson 1981[1967b]: 498)

I am convinced that there must still be a number of other concepts or models of potentially systemic generality scattered in some (un)fairly unknown works of disappeared or living researchers. We should dive for them in the deeps of literature. (François 1999: 217)

The selections included are of such a nature that readers who feel that the study of the history of systematic social theory is a waste of time will have occasion to ponder how thoroughly our predecessors have plagiarized many of our best ideas. (Meyer 1956: 166)

This, we may conceive, would be no small Advantage to the Knowledge of a thinking Man, if all his past Thoughts and Reasonings could be always present to him. (Locke 1741a: 115)

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